I’m not for taking everybody’s guns away, but continuing to do nothing when these mass shootings are taking place nearly once a week is madness. It’s a terrible question to ask, but is congress taking no action because gun sales go through the roof after every one of these tragedies? Total inaction might be what the NRA and gun industry want, but it certainly isn’t what the vast majority of the American people have said they want.

States United to Prevent Gun Violence (SUPGV) released a video debunking the notion that gun ownership makes a person safer. (Research has demonstrated that owning a gun increases the risk of death or injury.)

SUPGV conducted a “hidden camera social experiment” to record the reactions of potential gun buyers at a fake gun store they had set up in Manhattan. When prospective purchasers inquired about a firearm, the clerk informed the customer of tragedies — including mass shootings and unintentional shootings involving children — that involved the use of that particular model of firearm. Hidden cameras recorded prospective gun buyers’ shocked reactions.

Each firearm (actually a replica) in the fake gun store was tagged with a history of tragic accidents or mass shootings associated with that model.

“The Utah Shooting Sports Council is offering a free class Friday to qualified educators who want to carry concealed firearms in schools.

“The class is open not only to teachers but also all other staff that work in schools,” said Clark Aposhian, chairman of the council. “Because of the popularity last year, we wanted to offer it again.” SLTrib article

May 2013: Clark was arrested and jailed for driving a 2-ton army truck to his ex-wife’s house in Cottonwood Heights and making threats to one of the people who lived there. A few days later, the Judge confiscated his guns.

I’m sick and tired of the “guns don’t kill people; people do” mantra. Its too stupid for words.

If it ain’t a hunting rifle, it was designed for a singular purpose, to give a human being the ability to kill another human being. The same cannot be said about spoons, knives, cars, hammers or hamburgers.

There have been 3,364 gun deaths since the Sandy Hook elementary school mass shooting last December. That’s a second 9/11 attack. Or put it another way, more Americans die from being shot in our country every year than the total fatalities from ten years of war in Afghanistan.

There are many law abiding and responsible gun owners in this country. And I understand that those who play by the rules might feel like they are being punished for the wrongdoing of others. But no legislation being considered would end gun ownership as we know it. What it would do is begin to make owning a gun look a little more like owning a car. In that process we can make it more expensive and more legally punishing for criminals to get guns and make our streets and our schools safer for all. The gun laws on the table are just common sense; they bring us back to the common good.

The vast majority of gun owners understand and support the need for gun safety legislation. But the Gun Lobby is different. They insist on re-opening settled issues (e.g. background checks), and on claiming their constitutional rights would be violated by a ban on continued sales of military-style weapons and high-capacity magazines.

Gail Turpin
Several observations after spending the afternoon in the Utah House Judiciary Committee hearings on 2 gun bills. Rep. Brian King and Rep. Patrice Arent are such a credit to their constituents and the Utah Democratic party. Both so smart and asked such relevant questions. Nineveh Dinha of Channel 13 is drop dead gorgeous. I had the pleasure of sitting next to Jean Welch Hill, who spoke eloquently on behalf of the Catholic Diocese of SLC on the need for reasonable gun control. I sure wish she was our Attorney General right now! The room was packed., complete with the guy with an assault rifle on his back, and the guy who was out of order so security came in and took him aside. I saw some of my favorite people and legislators, and it really is amazing to watch democracy in action.

Today’s Senate committee hearing on gun safety began with a surprise appearance by Former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ), grievously wounded during an assassination attempt two years ago that left six others dead.

“Thank you for inviting me here today,” she said. “This is an important conversation for our children, for our community, for Democrats and Republicans. Speaking is difficult, but I need to say something important.”

She continued: “Violence is a big problem. Too many children are dying. Too many children. We must do something. It will be hard, but the time is now. You must act. Be bold, be courageous. Americans are counting on you.”

“You could find yourself in this country in a lawless environment from a natural disaster or a riot,” he said… The Republican senator added that he would carry his assault rifle around his neighborhood in the event of “a law and order breakdown.”

And then it got weirder.

One of the witnesses at the hearing, Daily Caller writer Gayle Trotter, head of the conservative Independent Women’s Forum, argued that limiting magazine capacity would particularly affect women, who she claimed believe the AR-15 to be their “weapon of choice.”

“An assault weapon in the hands of a young woman defending her babies in her home becomes a defense weapon, and the peace of mind that a woman has as she’s facing three, four, five violent attackers, intruders in her home, with her children screaming in the background, the peace of mind that she has knowing that she has a scary-looking gun gives her more courage when she’s fighting hardened, violent criminals,” she said.

I’m almost 60 years old. I never had even one “hardened, violent criminal” attack me at home. Not one time. Do these people know how crazy they sound to most Americans?

The fact of the matter is that more guns put women in danger. The Harvard Injury Control Research Center has found that states with more guns have more female violent deaths. Their research also found that batterers who owned guns liked to use them to scare and control their victims, and would often use the gun to threaten the victim, threaten her pets or loved ones, clean them menacingly during arguments, or even fire them to scare her.

Trotter’s organization, the Independent Women’s Forum, opposes legislation aimed at curbing domestic violence including the Violence Against Women Act.Read the rest of this entry »

The most honest message in Washington County Sheriff Cory Pulsipher’s Open Letter to Barack Obama is that Sheriffs are politicians; “We, the elected sheriffs of Utah…” On the other hand, use of the word “We” implying all Utah Sheriffs signed off on the language, is most likely, a lie.

It is difficult to believe that ALL of Utahs 28 county Sheriffs support threatening President Obama with a call to “trade our lives” in an effort to resist “federal officials,” which may also explain why NO OTHER County Sheriffs’ names appear in the letter posted on Cory’s website on behalf of the Utah Sheriff’s Association.

The only substance in the letter is the final paragraph. Whether this paragraph was agreed upon by all of Utah’s Sheriffs, or is merely a personal campaign message, the reader must decide for her/himself.

We respect the Office of the President of the United States of America. But, make no mistake, …we will enforce the rights guaranteed…by the Constitution. No federal official will be permitted to descend upon constituents and take from them what the Bill of Rights-in particular Amendment II-has given them. We, like you, swore a solemn oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and we are prepared to trade our lives for the preservation of its traditional interpretation.

Finally, it must be noted that Mr. Pulispher’s implicit assertion that HIS is also “the traditional interpretation” of the second amendment is a canard and should offend even the most pedestrian history buff. I think we can safely assume Sheriff Pulispher’s interpretation of 2A is identical to Wayne LaPierre’s. And it is wrong and certainly NOT the “traditional one.

“In regard to the Second Amendment, not a single Congressman or Senator is recorded as saying that it would establish an individual’s right to possess a weapon.

…In summary the original intent of the Second Amendment was to protect the right of the states to form and maintain state militias, free of the potential federal incursion created by Article I, section 8, clause 16 of the Constitution. Hopefully, we will one day get an intellectually honest majority on the Supreme Court that will reverse the judicial activism that the five right wing ideologues on SCOTUS forced on the American people in Heller, Citizens United, and the majority’s dangerous restriction on the interstate commerce clause in National Federation of Independent Business et al. v. Sibelius (otherwise known as the “Obamacare” decision).”

For those of you who would dismiss the above as a radical assertion, I would challenge you to read this well research and sourced primer on the actual debate and circumstances surrounding the ratification of the Second Amendment. For those of you more used to reading NRA, Breitbart, Drudge and or the mountains of fabricated, unsupportable drivel presented by so-called second amendment advocates, I fear you will find the level of primary sources and facts in this brief, excruciating.

Obama should exercise his presidential authority to effect sensible gun control nationally for two reasons:

1. It bring a badly needed Supreme Court challenge that will likely involve the “Militia” part of the second amendment.

2. It will turn up the volume for historians and constitutional experts in a broad national debate in which second-amendment-extremist will learn a more reasonable interpretation of the second amendment; one that is supported by fact and history instead of the version Justice Scalia smeared like skid marks into our national undies.

We are finally beginning to have an honest discussion about the true meaning of the Second Amendment. Until Sandy Hook, gun rights extremist managed to dominate the conversation. They were allowed to ignore the “A well regulated Militia, being necessary” part.

Here is a PERFECT EXAMPLE from an interview by Nashville’s WSMV-TV on Friday.

It is a fact that the average James Yeager and other Second Amendment Advocates cannot actually recite the whole sentence:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

And who is that? James Yeager, CEO of Tactical Response, a company that specializes in selling exactly the types of weapons we don’t need, and then training you to use them. Apparently to overthrow your government.

Sadly that is not his original channel video. Why? Because he is a total coward, and already took the original down. But on the internet, things have a tendency to pop back up again.

I eagerly await all the true patriot tea bagger supporters of freedom and haters of treasonous people who I am sure are already formulating a response to remove this man who just explained that he is planning on committing treason. I am sure they are shutting him done as I type this.

You know how people sometimes say “if only we had warning before he went crazy and flew off the handle” after a shooting? This video is a red flag. A giant screaming red flag. With fireworks.

Increasingly the first red flag that you are the type of mentally unstable person who shouldn’t be allowed to own a gun is that you own a gun.

The National Rifle Association countered with “arm the teachers.” Gun clubs claim hundreds of teachers are applying for free weapons training. Two hundred people showed up for a class in West Valley City, Utah, outside Salt Lake City, on December 27, 2012, for example. Not all of the people who took the course were teachers. But some were, including Carolyn Cain, who teaches special education kids in kindergarten to the 6th grade in Utah County, Utah.